Kevin said: "We just wanted to let everyone know that privately we are not together anymore but professionally we are stronger than ever before.

"Dance is how we came together and is the glue that has held us together for years now. We've danced on Broadway, the West End, we have five Strictly finals between us.

"We’re still the best of friends – we've got a lot of love and respect for each other. I still see Karen pretty much every day... we're always throwing ideas around and putting things together creatively.

"What we’ve found is that since we’ve been honest with each other about our relationship, we've unlocked this new wealth of creativity and we're taking our professional relationship to the next level now."

The couple were pictured wearing their wedding rings as they arrived at filming for a tribute for Bruce Forsyth

Karen added that they will be continuing with their tour saying: "We have such great chemistry and for us it's all about the storytelling and giving the best performance and entertaining and inspiring.

"At the end of the day it’s about giving back to our fans and we love dancing together so much. We’re feeling very positive and it's going to be one of the best tours."

Fans took to Twitter in their droves to praise them for continuing with the tour.

One wrote: "Full of admiration in the way you handled this, respect, good look with the tour, saw the opener of your first tour it was amazing hopefully catch this one somewhere."

@karen_hauer I have even more respect for you after today. I'm so happy you will both still be touring and are maintaining a professional relationship, that's not an easy thing to do. You are, and forever will be, my favourite dancer. Lots of love to you 😘